A host adapter board (“HAB”) plugs into a host computer system to provide added functionality to the computer system. For example, the HAB facilitates communication between a peripheral component interconnect (“PCI”) bus of the host computer system and a peripheral device (e.g., a storage subsystem, a network communication medium, etc.). The HAB often includes one or more components that provide the interface to the PCI bus and one or more components (e.g., an I/O controller) that provide interfacing to the peripheral device.
The PCI bus standards define certain PCI signal timing specifications. The PCI bus signal standards may be found, for example, at http://www.pcisig.com/specifications. Among the signaling standards specified therein are slew rate and clock-to-signal-valid delay. “Slew rate” defines a maximum rate of change in an output signal, for example four volts per nanosecond within a defined operating voltage range. “Clock-to-signal-valid” delay defines the time (e.g., five nanoseconds) between an initial clock signal and a ready state, which can be used to initiate data transfer to the HAB. To function properly, the HAB must process PCI signals from the bus within these PCI timing specifications.
One of the problems with current manufacturing tests for HAB and other modular data-processing components is that the operators or users are required to manually reboot the test system or select an option that will reboot the test system once they have changed out the HAB under test. In a manufacturing environment, the test system remains powered up while the slot for the HAB is powered down. This allows the operator to change out the HAB being tested. The PCI configuration, however, is lost. Without the PCI configuration information, the test system is unable to communicate to the HBA. Rebooting is required in order for the test system to communicate with the PCI or other similar card and the entire configuration space must be re-build for all associated devices found on the PCI bus. This process of rebooting and recreating the PCI configurations is very time consuming and costly in a manufacturing environment.
In the HAB functional test side of manufacturing, one of the main concerns is testing time. Because rebooting a system is factored into the testing time, test times are large and costly. There have been some approaches implemented for solving the reboot time consumption. The current solution involves rebooting the system and having the PCI configurations restored during the reboot process. The reboot process, however, is also time consuming and adds to the manufacturing costs of such HAB's.